For those wanting to know what the Latin phrase underneath translates to:
Cur potius lacrimae tibi mi Philomela placebant? Why do tears please you more, My Philomela?
From Wikipedia: Philomela or Philomel (Ancient Greek: ) is a minor figure in Greek mythology and is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary, artistic, and musical works in the Western canon.
Everyone has forgotten that NASA landed a probe on frickin' Titan just a few years ago! That's a motherfuckin' moon way the hell out there orbiting motherfuckin' Saturn and we set a probe down on the motherfuckin' surface and took some pics in the process.
I purchased a GQ-4x USB EEPROM programmer a few years ago and it has worked very well. It's basically a Willem programmer, supports a lot of different programmable devices from old 80s EEPROMs to the newer pics. I primarily use it for programming custom 2732s, 2764s and 27128s for vintage PC stuff (Apple IIs, Kaypros, etc.). The software is decent and has a large database, although make sure you set the speed to the slowest possible setting and plug in an AC wall adapter (not included) if you want a good burn. It works with USB and all Windows versions. Sadly, no OSX and don't try to run it through VMWare or Parallels.
I also recommend you get a UV eraser while you're at it.
Bah! Real tabletop gamers don't use simplified rule systems and only one die. We want esoteric to-hit tables, armor charts, save modifiers out the ass, and most importantly, lots of dice rolls. When my warrior executes a jumping, 360 degree sword sweep while simultaneously imbibing a potion of gaseous form and making a rude gesture to the Supreme Overlord of the Undead, I expect to feel the beginnings of carpal tunnel!!!
I fling my poo at the d20 system, WoTC, and especially D&D 4E with its new fangled, computer-artsy books and "prestige" classes. No good DM should be letting his players live past level 6 anyway.
This is a very sad imitation of the original Heathkit Hero robot. The original Hero had a programmable robotic arm. This robot looks more like the Hero Jr, the less expensive, less featured version of the Hero. I built a Hero Jr. in 1985 (worked all summer to save up the $650 I paid for it) and it was a more functional robot than what is listed here. My Hero Jr. had the IR bit but it also had a sound detector, sonar, and speech synthesis. I would expect something made twenty two years later to be a little bit better than Windows on Wheels. Where's the arm? Where' the AI? Where's the ability to dynamically explore and map out the environment?
I would prefer state-funded over federally-funded because there's a ton of gotchas that comes with federal funding that works to kill our freedoms.
Well, I live in Texas where the state just decided that most of our new state highways are going to be toll roads. So now I get the pleasure of seeing my property tax dollars go to the governor's friends to build the roads that I have to pay for a second time whenever I use them. And as for freedoms, well, you obviously don't live in Texas, one of the most conservative statest in the Union. Thanks Texas! There's a reason why we're at the bottom of every ranking in the country.
I can't imagine how it would be possible to fund anything through tax money and not expect the outcome to be determined by the power elite who control that money.
In a democracy, we are supposed to be the "power elite" that controls that money because the politicians are accountable to us. I realize the U.S. democracy is currently having some technical difficulties at the moment, but government-funded studies are still a whole hell of a lot more reliable than the only other alternative, that being corporate-sponsored projects.
This plan has all the indicators of federal backing. Why would AT&T spend billions of dollars in blocking technology when what they really want are more Internet users, not less? Illegal mp3 downloading means more people signing up for broadband. They're getting some federal money or something for this.
I predict AT&T's first step will be to block BitTorrent sites like Pirate Bay. It's frightfully easy for them to do and they'll prepare a press release in conjunction with the State Department or some other official governemnt agency that declares BitTorrent an illegal site, threat to national IP security, or whatever.
I wouldn't put too much stock in any "science" from anyone at the Dept. of the Interior.
Are you saying you would rather put your "stock" in a political appointee that's been caught numerous times altering government reports, in one case because she didn't want the habitat to intrude on her husbands's ranch!?
The nice thing about science is you must publish your results and data for peer review. If you try to fabricate your results, somebody will eventually catch you and your career is over. But every time a Bush appointee is caught altering data, they quit and go to work for Exxon. What we need are some real criminal consequences for altering government reports. It's a criminal offense for a company to alter its books or for me to lie on my taxes. People like this lady should be going to jail.
These guys were giving demo games at Gen Con. It's the most realistic space combat game I've ever played. Full 3-dimensional movement, Newtonian physics and everything from laser fire to thrust has been accurately modeled. For example, when you fire a laser at a ship, you hit the area of the ship facing the laser. Equipment in that area of the ship is what takes damage. When you exceed the hull depth of that area and still have damage points remaining from the laser, you proceed through the ship to the next area for damage calculation. You can actually have lasers entering and exiting a ship, doing the requisite damage to areas they pass through. And don't even get me started on missiles, coil guns and nuclear warheads.
I should add that this is not a game for beginners. It's a demanding game with charts and look-up tables, but it's oh so wonderful the first time you maneuver your 5000 ton Rafik Mk1 onto just the right attack vector and let loose your firepower into the enemy's soft underbelly! So if you think D20 is for simpletons, give this game a try.
I think ECS' employees take great pride in their hard work, even though they are getting paid very little in comparison to bloated unionized factories in North America.
Yes, how dare those union workers try to get things like livable wages, child labor laws and health insurance. What were those silly Americans thinking?
I don't see you complaining when articles from Daily Kos are posted. Why is it so bad to hear both sides of a contreversy?
That would be because there have been no Daily Kos opinion pieces posted to Slashdot on any topic at any time (I grepped Slashdot just to be sure). When did pointing out bad science become a "liberal" value?
After reading these posts, I think what concerns me more than the horrific labor practices going on in China and the rest of Asia is the moral vacuum making itself readily apparent in many of you here. People in this forum are actually trying to rationalize abhorrent labor practices that we here in the United States and Europe spent decades trying to eradicate from our own countries. Capitalism makes dictatorships wealthy and powerful just as easily as it makes Democracies the same.
Arguments like "it's just the free market" or "it's OK because it's keeping them alive" can be used to justify child labor, slave labor, indentured servitude and just about every other form of abhorrent treatment present in this world. To those of you who think we can do nothing, just remember how successful companies have been forcing their copyright and patent laws on the world. Imagine what would happen if we could convince our governments to apply the same zeal to global labor standards that they give to global pharmaceutical patents.
I can only hope that someday the complacent souls sitting comfortably at their air-conditioned desks making light, apathetic comedy of the suffering on this planet, those who watch with glee the pretty explosions of war with no thoughts to the death and carnage wrought by such action, will come to be ashamed of themselves. You and your ilk have put greed above liberty and have set the human condition back 100 years. You sicken me.
And now I prepare myself to be modded down into oblivion,
I normally wouldn't care what a student uses to take notes, but laptops are a huge distraction for the rest of the class. The constant clicking, the screen glow, the guy surfing Slashdot in front of you on the school's wireless network. If you really want annoying, these same students will stand up and snap images of the whiteboard with their cellphones because they can't figure out how to draw the diagrams on their laptop.
So here I sit, quietly, with my 99 cent Meade folder, 30 cent pencil, and a dollar's worth of notebook paper, taking far more detailed and accurate notes than anyone with a $2000 laptop. What these law students need to learn is that sometimes the most technologically advanced solution is not always the best solution. And cheers to the professor for realizing this.
Thanks. Let me clarify that I think all comments from any registered user, not just +5's, should have the option of being forwarded to the user's rep. The goal should be to move the debate from Slashdot onto MSNBC or CNN, and that will only happen when volumes of email start arriving in people's boxes.
The Firefox plug-in idea is not bad either.
X
P.S. Apologies to non-Americans. We'll get to you next:)
>Why not email them directly if you care it? Or take the time and write a physical letter? Why would they even bother with a form letter and a url link?
You do not understand how the lobbying game works today. When the Christian Coalition or any other grass-roots group wants to draw attention to a particular issue or change policy, they send out an Action Alert email to their members. These members then start swamping Congressional phone lines and in-boxes. Twenty thousand emails in one day gets your representative's attention really fast, compared to a single, hand-written letter.
What I'm proposing is not so sheep like. We leverage the size of the Slashdot, but allow users to easily forward their own comments to their appropriate representative. We absolutely must start thinking on a larger scale if we are to have any chance at all of competing against multi-million-dollar lobbying groups.
What you might call lazy, I call a very efficient form of petitioning the government - geek style!
A few weeks ago I submitted an Ask Slashdot question to the editors about creating a Slashdot Political Action Network. My question still shows pending, but maybe this latest outrage is a good time for me to post my idea to the public forum. Here's my idea:
Why not set up a method in Slasdhot whereby YRO and related articles have a link that allows a registered user to forward his forum comments to his/her appropriate representative(s) in their district? Non-profits are doing this now with great effect. Instead of preaching to the choir, shouldn't our +5 Insightful comments be forwarded to our representatives and news agencies. Can you just imagine the effect we could have by Slashdotting Congress!!!
A lot of people will say that nobody in Congress reads email, but that's not entirely true. Your opinions are put in For and Against piles and some are even read; I know this from personal experience. By hitting Congress and the news agencies we also generate awareness for many issues that go largely unreported like black box voting, DMCA, and so on.
Bah! Real tabletop gamers don't use simplified rule systems and only one die. We want to-hit tables, armor charts, save modifiers and most importantly, lots of dice rolls. When my warrior executes a jumping, 360 degree sword sweep while simultaneously imbibing a potion of gaseous form and making a rude gesture to the boss monster, I expect to feel the beginnings of carpal tunnel!
I fling my poo at the d20 system and especially D&D 3E with its new fangled, computer-artsy books and "prestige" classes. No good DM should be letting his players live past level 10 anyway.
Amateur astronomy has come a long way in the last ten years. With CCD imaging and sigal processing software, you can filter out light pollution and get some absolutely amazing images from your backyard. Take a look at
This device is the famous Pocket Pain Field Generator. You used to be able to buy the schematics from Information Unlimited, which was a mail-order shop for very interesting gadgets like tesla coils and lasers.
I built one of these babies in the late 80's and raised holy kane in high school because none of the teachers could hear the device. Another property of these devices is that the sound seems to be coming from all directions. It's virtually impossible to determine the source - like say if somebody were to place the device in a library somewhere:)
Even if seatbelts and airbags weren't mandated, car companies would still offer cars with them, because consumers would demand them
If you go back and read the papers from the 70's and 80's, you'll see that the majority of car manufacturers did not provide shoulder-harness seatbelts and airbags until legislation was passed mandating their inclusion, despite widespread public support of these devices.
The restaurant you're eating at has a damn good reason to ensure that their workers handle the food you're eating properly: if they don't, they lose profits. All it would take is one or two cases of food-borne illness before word would spread and that restaurant's business would dry up pretty quick.
1. If this is true, then why are the rates of food and water contamincation higher in countries like Mexico? Shouldn't the free-market method of quality control have weeded out all of the bad restaurants by now?
2. What if all of the restaurants and food sellers in your area subscribe to the cheaper-is-better business model?
3. Read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to understand what life was like in "free-market" America before the FDA
4. Please explain why the notoriously unsafe aluminum wiring was used in just about every structure built in the 70's until the building codes were changed to prohibit its use. What happens to the free-market system when everybody uses the inferior and unsafe solution despite the consumer's wish.
Remember that if you don't like some what some business is doing, you can exercise your ultimate right as a sovereign consumer and not patronize that business
I really don't like Wal Mart and would like to shop elsewhere for my camping equipment. Unfortunately, Wal Mart has wiped out the other two stores in my town that sold camping equipment. What do people do when the free-market system creates a monopoly or a cartel as usually happens in unregulated economies?
In the absence of government regulations, Consumer Reports-type publications will open up to test, survey and measure how well car safety devices work, how many people have caught food-borne illnesses from Bob's BBQ or Joe's Gyros, and whether or not the wiring in those restaurants is safe or not.
1. If I were a restaurant owner, I would simply not allow that Consumer Reports person to inspect my kitchen.
2. What's to stop me from just paying a nice fat "consultation" fee to this Consumer Rating Company so they give me a good rating? (If you've ever been through ISO 9000 certification, you'll be especially aware of this little trick).
3. Assuming I can find an uncorrupted for-profit Consumer Rating Company, it's going to cost me more than a non-profit governmental entity.
And I now I hear you asking, "what if people don't take the time to buy these consumer watchdog magazines
I have an idea. Since it would be a real pain in the ass to have to constantly check up on every little thing like house wiring, car safety, food quality, etc, let's pool our resources into some sort of not-for-profit entity that monitors all of these things for us in an unbiased and fair manner. Give this organization some teeth to enforce our collective wishes and we might have something. We could call it...hmmmmmm....government?
Before you decide you want to live in a libertarian economy, please spend a couple of years in Russia, Mexico, Turkey or any of the many 2nd and 3rd-world nations where the government is practically non-existent. Imagine the U.S. with no building codes, no food quality standards, no pollution controls, no water quality standards, no monopoly protections, no vaccination requirements, no worker's rights, no pharmaceutical testing requirements, no speed limits, no spectrum regulations, and I could go on and on.
We have a lot of regulations in this country, but at least I know that when I drive to On the Border for lunch, I have a pretty good chance of those mandated seat belts and airbags saving my life in the event of an accident, not getting salmonella with my burrito, and not having the restaurant catch on fire because of aluminum wiring.
Most of the world's economy has been primarily libertarian since the dawn of man. It was the concept of human rights that catapulted us into the modern world we currently enjoy. And human rights should always trump capitalism.
Does anybody here really think companies will stop giving out options to CEO's and other executives? It's more likely that cash-strapped start-ups will just stop giving out options to rank and file employees like you and me. Stock options are just about the only way you can get somebody to work 80-hour weeks with low pay which is the standard for most pre-IPO start-ups. Without that incentive, why would I or anybody else want to work for a pre-IPO company when I could get better salary and better job security with a large company like Motorola.
Slashdot Mirror
For those wanting to know what the Latin phrase underneath translates to:
Cur potius lacrimae tibi mi Philomela placebant?
Why do tears please you more, My Philomela?
From Wikipedia: Philomela or Philomel (Ancient Greek: ) is a minor figure in Greek mythology and is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary, artistic, and musical works in the Western canon.
Everyone has forgotten that NASA landed a probe on frickin' Titan just a few years ago! That's a motherfuckin' moon way the hell out there orbiting motherfuckin' Saturn and we set a probe down on the motherfuckin' surface and took some pics in the process.
And China has put a person in orbit. How nice.
I purchased a GQ-4x USB EEPROM programmer a few years ago and it has worked very well. It's basically a Willem programmer, supports a lot of different programmable devices from old 80s EEPROMs to the newer pics. I primarily use it for programming custom 2732s, 2764s and 27128s for vintage PC stuff (Apple IIs, Kaypros, etc.). The software is decent and has a large database, although make sure you set the speed to the slowest possible setting and plug in an AC wall adapter (not included) if you want a good burn. It works with USB and all Windows versions. Sadly, no OSX and don't try to run it through VMWare or Parallels.
I also recommend you get a UV eraser while you're at it.
Bah! Real tabletop gamers don't use simplified rule systems and only one die. We want esoteric to-hit tables, armor charts, save modifiers out the ass, and most importantly, lots of dice rolls. When my warrior executes a jumping, 360 degree sword sweep while simultaneously imbibing a potion of gaseous form and making a rude gesture to the Supreme Overlord of the Undead, I expect to feel the beginnings of carpal tunnel!!!
I fling my poo at the d20 system, WoTC, and especially D&D 4E with its new fangled, computer-artsy books and "prestige" classes. No good DM should be letting his players live past level 6 anyway.
A pox on you WoTC!
This is a very sad imitation of the original Heathkit Hero robot. The original Hero had a programmable robotic arm. This robot looks more like the Hero Jr, the less expensive, less featured version of the Hero. I built a Hero Jr. in 1985 (worked all summer to save up the $650 I paid for it) and it was a more functional robot than what is listed here. My Hero Jr. had the IR bit but it also had a sound detector, sonar, and speech synthesis. I would expect something made twenty two years later to be a little bit better than Windows on Wheels. Where's the arm? Where' the AI? Where's the ability to dynamically explore and map out the environment?
Very disappointing.
I would prefer state-funded over federally-funded because there's a ton of gotchas that comes with federal funding that works to kill our freedoms.
Well, I live in Texas where the state just decided that most of our new state highways are going to be toll roads. So now I get the pleasure of seeing my property tax dollars go to the governor's friends to build the roads that I have to pay for a second time whenever I use them. And as for freedoms, well, you obviously don't live in Texas, one of the most conservative statest in the Union. Thanks Texas! There's a reason why we're at the bottom of every ranking in the country.
I can't imagine how it would be possible to fund anything through tax money and not expect the outcome to be determined by the power elite who control that money.
In a democracy, we are supposed to be the "power elite" that controls that money because the politicians are accountable to us. I realize the U.S. democracy is currently having some technical difficulties at the moment, but government-funded studies are still a whole hell of a lot more reliable than the only other alternative, that being corporate-sponsored projects.
This plan has all the indicators of federal backing. Why would AT&T spend billions of dollars in blocking technology when what they really want are more Internet users, not less? Illegal mp3 downloading means more people signing up for broadband. They're getting some federal money or something for this.
I predict AT&T's first step will be to block BitTorrent sites like Pirate Bay. It's frightfully easy for them to do and they'll prepare a press release in conjunction with the State Department or some other official governemnt agency that declares BitTorrent an illegal site, threat to national IP security, or whatever.
I wouldn't put too much stock in any "science" from anyone at the Dept. of the Interior.
Are you saying you would rather put your "stock" in a political appointee that's been caught numerous times altering government reports, in one case because she didn't want the habitat to intrude on her husbands's ranch!? The nice thing about science is you must publish your results and data for peer review. If you try to fabricate your results, somebody will eventually catch you and your career is over. But every time a Bush appointee is caught altering data, they quit and go to work for Exxon. What we need are some real criminal consequences for altering government reports. It's a criminal offense for a company to alter its books or for me to lie on my taxes. People like this lady should be going to jail.
Get this story out of the tech sites and into the major media outlets:
r m.shtml
Media contacts:
* Contact CNN: http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10285339/ (viewerservices@msnbc.com letters@msnbc.com)
ABC: http://abcnews.go.com/Reference/story?id=54216
CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/feedback/fb_news_fo
* Contact the DNC: 202-863-8000 http://www.democrats.org/page/s/contact
* Complain to the FCC: 202-418-1440, phone; 202-418-0232, fax.
* Yell at the NRCC 202-479-7000
* 1-866-OUR VOTE and get in the database if you get this kind of harassment
For those looking for a next generation game, check out Attack Vector: Tactical - http://www.adastragames.com/products/adastra/av.ht ml
These guys were giving demo games at Gen Con. It's the most realistic space combat game I've ever played. Full 3-dimensional movement, Newtonian physics and everything from laser fire to thrust has been accurately modeled. For example, when you fire a laser at a ship, you hit the area of the ship facing the laser. Equipment in that area of the ship is what takes damage. When you exceed the hull depth of that area and still have damage points remaining from the laser, you proceed through the ship to the next area for damage calculation. You can actually have lasers entering and exiting a ship, doing the requisite damage to areas they pass through. And don't even get me started on missiles, coil guns and nuclear warheads.
I should add that this is not a game for beginners. It's a demanding game with charts and look-up tables, but it's oh so wonderful the first time you maneuver your 5000 ton Rafik Mk1 onto just the right attack vector and let loose your firepower into the enemy's soft underbelly! So if you think D20 is for simpletons, give this game a try.
I think ECS' employees take great pride in their hard work, even though they are getting paid very little in comparison to bloated unionized factories in North America.
Yes, how dare those union workers try to get things like livable wages, child labor laws and health insurance. What were those silly Americans thinking?
X
I don't see you complaining when articles from Daily Kos are posted. Why is it so bad to hear both sides of a contreversy?
That would be because there have been no Daily Kos opinion pieces posted to Slashdot on any topic at any time (I grepped Slashdot just to be sure). When did pointing out bad science become a "liberal" value?
And well said, MarkusQ! X
Other articles from this website:
- Christianity under Attack: Assault against America's Christian traditions continue
- The ultimate epithet in the liberal lexicon
- Throw the U.N. on the Ash Heap of History
Do I need to continue? Jesus Christ, Slashdot! Do you do any sort of editorial fact checking before posting a story - under Science!
No Digg.
X
After reading these posts, I think what concerns me more than the horrific labor practices going on in China and the rest of Asia is the moral vacuum making itself readily apparent in many of you here. People in this forum are actually trying to rationalize abhorrent labor practices that we here in the United States and Europe spent decades trying to eradicate from our own countries. Capitalism makes dictatorships wealthy and powerful just as easily as it makes Democracies the same.
Arguments like "it's just the free market" or "it's OK because it's keeping them alive" can be used to justify child labor, slave labor, indentured servitude and just about every other form of abhorrent treatment present in this world. To those of you who think we can do nothing, just remember how successful companies have been forcing their copyright and patent laws on the world. Imagine what would happen if we could convince our governments to apply the same zeal to global labor standards that they give to global pharmaceutical patents.
I can only hope that someday the complacent souls sitting comfortably at their air-conditioned desks making light, apathetic comedy of the suffering on this planet, those who watch with glee the pretty explosions of war with no thoughts to the death and carnage wrought by such action, will come to be ashamed of themselves. You and your ilk have put greed above liberty and have set the human condition back 100 years. You sicken me.
And now I prepare myself to be modded down into oblivion,
X
I normally wouldn't care what a student uses to take notes, but laptops are a huge distraction for the rest of the class. The constant clicking, the screen glow, the guy surfing Slashdot in front of you on the school's wireless network. If you really want annoying, these same students will stand up and snap images of the whiteboard with their cellphones because they can't figure out how to draw the diagrams on their laptop.
So here I sit, quietly, with my 99 cent Meade folder, 30 cent pencil, and a dollar's worth of notebook paper, taking far more detailed and accurate notes than anyone with a $2000 laptop. What these law students need to learn is that sometimes the most technologically advanced solution is not always the best solution. And cheers to the professor for realizing this.
X
Thanks. Let me clarify that I think all comments from any registered user, not just +5's, should have the option of being forwarded to the user's rep. The goal should be to move the debate from Slashdot onto MSNBC or CNN, and that will only happen when volumes of email start arriving in people's boxes.
:)
The Firefox plug-in idea is not bad either.
X
P.S.
Apologies to non-Americans. We'll get to you next
>Why not email them directly if you care it? Or take the time and write a physical letter? Why would they even bother with a form letter and a url link?
You do not understand how the lobbying game works today. When the Christian Coalition or any other grass-roots group wants to draw attention to a particular issue or change policy, they send out an Action Alert email to their members. These members then start swamping Congressional phone lines and in-boxes. Twenty thousand emails in one day gets your representative's attention really fast, compared to a single, hand-written letter.
What I'm proposing is not so sheep like. We leverage the size of the Slashdot, but allow users to easily forward their own comments to their appropriate representative. We absolutely must start thinking on a larger scale if we are to have any chance at all of competing against multi-million-dollar lobbying groups.
What you might call lazy, I call a very efficient form of petitioning the government - geek style!
X
A few weeks ago I submitted an Ask Slashdot question to the editors about creating a Slashdot Political Action Network. My question still shows pending, but maybe this latest outrage is a good time for me to post my idea to the public forum. Here's my idea:
Why not set up a method in Slasdhot whereby YRO and related articles have a link that allows a registered user to forward his forum comments to his/her appropriate representative(s) in their district? Non-profits are doing this now with great effect. Instead of preaching to the choir, shouldn't our +5 Insightful comments be forwarded to our representatives and news agencies. Can you just imagine the effect we could have by Slashdotting Congress!!!
A lot of people will say that nobody in Congress reads email, but that's not entirely true. Your opinions are put in For and Against piles and some are even read; I know this from personal experience. By hitting Congress and the news agencies we also generate awareness for many issues that go largely unreported like black box voting, DMCA, and so on.
So Slashdot editors, how about it?
X
Bah! Real tabletop gamers don't use simplified rule systems and only one die. We want to-hit tables, armor charts, save modifiers and most importantly, lots of dice rolls. When my warrior executes a jumping, 360 degree sword sweep while simultaneously imbibing a potion of gaseous form and making a rude gesture to the boss monster, I expect to feel the beginnings of carpal tunnel!
I fling my poo at the d20 system and especially D&D 3E with its new fangled, computer-artsy books and "prestige" classes. No good DM should be letting his players live past level 10 anyway.
Long live HackMaster!
http://www.kenzerco.com/
X
this guy's pictures:
He lives just outside of Houston, Texas.
X
This device is the famous Pocket Pain Field Generator. You used to be able to buy the schematics from Information Unlimited, which was a mail-order shop for very interesting gadgets like tesla coils and lasers.
:)
I built one of these babies in the late 80's and raised holy kane in high school because none of the teachers could hear the device. Another property of these devices is that the sound seems to be coming from all directions. It's virtually impossible to determine the source - like say if somebody were to place the device in a library somewhere
I grew up to become a electrical engineer, btw
X
Even if seatbelts and airbags weren't mandated, car companies would still offer cars with them, because consumers would demand them
If you go back and read the papers from the 70's and 80's, you'll see that the majority of car manufacturers did not provide shoulder-harness seatbelts and airbags until legislation was passed mandating their inclusion, despite widespread public support of these devices.
The restaurant you're eating at has a damn good reason to ensure that their workers handle the food you're eating properly: if they don't, they lose profits. All it would take is one or two cases of food-borne illness before word would spread and that restaurant's business would dry up pretty quick.
1. If this is true, then why are the rates of food and water contamincation higher in countries like Mexico? Shouldn't the free-market method of quality control have weeded out all of the bad restaurants by now?
2. What if all of the restaurants and food sellers in your area subscribe to the cheaper-is-better business model?
3. Read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to understand what life was like in "free-market" America before the FDA
4. Please explain why the notoriously unsafe aluminum wiring was used in just about every structure built in the 70's until the building codes were changed to prohibit its use. What happens to the free-market system when everybody uses the inferior and unsafe solution despite the consumer's wish.
Remember that if you don't like some what some business is doing, you can exercise your ultimate right as a sovereign consumer and not patronize that business
I really don't like Wal Mart and would like to shop elsewhere for my camping equipment. Unfortunately, Wal Mart has wiped out the other two stores in my town that sold camping equipment. What do people do when the free-market system creates a monopoly or a cartel as usually happens in unregulated economies?
In the absence of government regulations, Consumer Reports-type publications will open up to test, survey and measure how well car safety devices work, how many people have caught food-borne illnesses from Bob's BBQ or Joe's Gyros, and whether or not the wiring in those restaurants is safe or not.
1. If I were a restaurant owner, I would simply not allow that Consumer Reports person to inspect my kitchen.
2. What's to stop me from just paying a nice fat "consultation" fee to this Consumer Rating Company so they give me a good rating? (If you've ever been through ISO 9000 certification, you'll be especially aware of this little trick).
3. Assuming I can find an uncorrupted for-profit Consumer Rating Company, it's going to cost me more than a non-profit governmental entity.
And I now I hear you asking, "what if people don't take the time to buy these consumer watchdog magazines
I have an idea. Since it would be a real pain in the ass to have to constantly check up on every little thing like house wiring, car safety, food quality, etc, let's pool our resources into some sort of not-for-profit entity that monitors all of these things for us in an unbiased and fair manner. Give this organization some teeth to enforce our collective wishes and we might have something. We could call it...hmmmmmm....government?
Before you decide you want to live in a libertarian economy, please spend a couple of years in Russia, Mexico, Turkey or any of the many 2nd and 3rd-world nations where the government is practically non-existent. Imagine the U.S. with no building codes, no food quality standards, no pollution controls, no water quality standards, no monopoly protections, no vaccination requirements, no worker's rights, no pharmaceutical testing requirements, no speed limits, no spectrum regulations, and I could go on and on.
We have a lot of regulations in this country, but at least I know that when I drive to On the Border for lunch, I have a pretty good chance of those mandated seat belts and airbags saving my life in the event of an accident, not getting salmonella with my burrito, and not having the restaurant catch on fire because of aluminum wiring.
Most of the world's economy has been primarily libertarian since the dawn of man. It was the concept of human rights that catapulted us into the modern world we currently enjoy. And human rights should always trump capitalism.
Does anybody here really think companies will stop giving out options to CEO's and other executives? It's more likely that cash-strapped start-ups will just stop giving out options to rank and file employees like you and me. Stock options are just about the only way you can get somebody to work 80-hour weeks with low pay which is the standard for most pre-IPO start-ups. Without that incentive, why would I or anybody else want to work for a pre-IPO company when I could get better salary and better job security with a large company like Motorola.
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